Saturday, November 20, 2010

'Tangled' will be the last such movie it makes for the foreseeable future. The studio is aiming for wider appeal. ...

Funny thing. Back in 1985, the new managers of Disney decreed that stodgy, period fairy tale-type cartoons were over. Henceforth, they said, the only projects greenlit at the House of Mouse would be modern, urban tales. To that end, the new guys in town (Katzenberg and Eisner) gave the go-ahead for a contemporary version of Oliver featuring dogs.

Shortly thereafter, Disney changed course, bringing out a period fairy tale entitled "The Little Mermaid." The film made a whole lot of money, and over the next few years Disney created a bunch more fairy tales featuring princesses. Most of the princesses sang.

So now the House of Mouse is bringing out another princess movie, saying it's the last. But know what? If Tangled pulls down $500 million box office dollars, I'm betting the company will rethink its "No princess fairy tales" position.

I was around in the 80s doing development at Disney and remember them stating that the new direction was going to be buddy comedies. I was developing a few. The success of Mermaid made them decide to do more fairy tales and 'serious stories' while studios like Dreamworks and Pixar went into buddy comedies.

It's about time. With more women than men attending college and the workforce the idea of a "Prince is going to rescue me"philosophy becoming reality is slim to none...I guess it really is a fairy tale and most kids don't relate at all.

Catmull and Lasseter are MORONS for killing The Snow Queen. I rented the old Russian, American-dubbed version for my kids last Friday and they both - boy AND girl - loved it. They've been watching it over and over, and that version, BTW, is in pretty bad shape, but there was enough in it to captivate them. Me too, for that matter. The Snow Queen could have been a beautiful 2D film. And while, yes, it's a fairy tale, it's a very unconventional one. I've lost all faith in Lasseter with this latest move. Another Walt he will never be.

We've had our fair share of executive bashing on this site, and it's really not fair. With all due respect I think Dr. Ed and John have their hands full running Pixar Animation Studios. Expecting them to do more is simply not realistic.

A note to Mr. Iger. Get someone to run your animation division. Someone who can give it full time. Someone who has the respect of the artists and the industry. If you have to ask who that person is - then you really don't know what you're doing.

Walt Disney Animation StudiosA headline in today’s LA Times erroneously reported that the Disney fairy tale is a thing of the past, but I feel it is important to set the record straight that they are alive and well at Disney and continue this week with Tangled, a contemporary retelling of a much loved story. We have a number of projects in development with new twists that audiences will be able to enjoy for many years to come. - Ed Catmull

But of course, Ed Catmull did NOT say in his Facebook post that there are any more fairytale stories in any project in development.

Personally, I think genre is overstated. A good story is a good story, regardless of genre, and a bad story is a bad story.

The western is a pretty dead genre, but every now and then a good one comes along, and people watch it. Just recently, the trailer for "Cowboys and Aliens" came out, and got a lot of excitement, because it's an intriguing twist on an old genre.

If the fairytale is told well, people will probably watch. If it's not told well, people probably won't.

The timing of this article is practically criminal. Its as if Disney is actively trying to keep people from seeing Tangled (which, by the way, is getting rave reviews)

It sounds a LOT more like LA Times is trying to create "Will Princess & Frog happen again?" (for no other reason than it was "supposed" to happen right about this point in the script), and took some comments out of sensationalized context.Strong words, considering it hasn't even opened yet.

Disney and Catmull certainly want to play up the "It's not your average Disney film!" spin to head off people complaining about the style, and working in the idea of making "newer" films--But "We don't currently have any on the docket" is NOT the same as "We've barred them at the door": "Yes, we have no bananas" is not necessarily the same as "The government has banned bananas by law."

Ed's comments about "We wanted to try something new..." are almost immediately followed in every single citation by the Times reporter spinning it as "Pack it up, folks, it's over!"That sounds a lot like an article that's frustrated it's not quite getting the story it set out to write, and hoping they can still patch it together in the edit.

"And Disney was right to can The Snow Queen. It wasn't very interesting."

And that's Disney's fault, from what I hear. The writers tried to turn it into a another boy-girl meet-cute romance movie - and the boy and girl I'm referring to WASN'T the Kay and Gerda in the original story. Disney was trying to force the Hans Christian Anderson tale into a trite princess formula, and the Snow Queen isn't that kind of fairy tale. The writers just couldn't see the worth of the tale as it is. Major fail on their part.

And Floyd, your insight is much appreciated by many here - and elsewhere on the web. Thanks for your input on stories like this. I think you're right about Lasseter - talented and accomplished he certainly is, but I don't think he's the right guy to run WDAS. But I'm not sure Brad Bird is either. He's a great writer, but it's going to take more than that to get WDAS back on track again IMO.

Told ya:http://www.facebook.com/Disney?v=wallDisney A headline in today’s LA Times erroneously reported that the Disney fairy tale is a thing of the past, but I feel it is important to set the record straight that they are alive and well at Disney and continue this week with Tangled, a contemporary retelling of a much loved story. We have a number of projects in development with new twists that audiences will be able to enjoy for many years to come. - Ed Catmull

This is a below average article that does nothing but take out of context quotes and spin them into sensationalized propaganda. If anything it comes across as an attempt to build up buzz for the author or la times itself and bring in revenue through page hits.

It's poorly written and just repeats itself throughout each paragraph. I'm glad Ed decided to respond to the article as it has been thoroughly blown out of proportion.

The question, again, is how did we GET it in the first place?If Disney didn't "plant" the doom story as the first poster suggested, why was the LA Times so eager to pursue it as if they wanted it to be true?

Again, it's the mystery that simply nobody understands why Princess&Frog disappointed at the box office (ahemalvintar)--And, by coming up with wild chicken-entrail theories, believe they can "tame" such mysterious unexplained disasters by causing them to happen again under the exact same single set of laboratory circumstances.In this case, the reporter grabbed one interpretation, got it into his head that, aha, 'twas fairytales that killed the beast, and waved his magic wand to predict that Tangled would be the exact same disaster because his reasoning had declared it so.Too bad reality didn't quite work out that way yet, but with a little judicious misquoting, you can still bluff to make it look like people agree with you.

Ya know, if Disney released their films where they wouldn't compete against heavy hitter franchises, we wouldn't be in this mess.Hell, 2D animation wouldn't have died if they've done that. Didn't Treasure Planet go up against a Star Wars prequel or something?

AND James Bond 007. (And the hyped-up Halle Berry one at that.)And a surprising sudden word-of-mouth wave for Santa Clause 2, which the studio had expected to be crushed by the competition, out of theaters and on its way to video by the third week.

Not sure which of the three Disney had expected Planet to beat, but when the three existing hits came in ahead....HORRORS!But it was Eisner's historic bad move of pulling it out of release before the end of December (as a peace offering to the stockholders quarterly) that first demonstrated to studios how much money family films really made on Christmas-vacation week.

In the last 18 years Disney has released only two fairy tales (with the same directors) . The first a great film and a box office success, the second one the uninspired PatF, but this time alongside John Lasseter

>>>Catmull said he and Lasseter have been encouraging filmmakers to break with safe and predictable formulas and push creative boundaries.<<<<

The revisionist history that is going on here is amusing to read. Ed and John came in, scrapped most of what had gone into Rapunzel, and mandated that it be a Disney princess musical (in the Rapunzel fairy tale, she is not the child of the king and queen, but born of pathetic commoners -- Disney made her a classic princess).

Then, once irrevocably down that production path, Ed and John freak out, and try to expunge the evidence that it's a princess musical from the marketing. I didn't see any hint that she was a lost princess, that she had a crown, or an evil stepmother in any of the marketing. The music in the trailers couldn't be more different than the actual songs and music in the film. What story was revealed was much, much more about Flynn, the adventurous thief. And when the LA Times reports this, we get the typical corporate denials.

Having read the hype, and seen all the trailers, I was surprised just how much of a princess fairy tale this really was, and how much of it reminded me of The Little Mermaid and Aladdin and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. There's nothing wrong with that, at least from my standpoint, but it's obvious that to Ed and John there IS something wrong with that.

Now that the "silence" order has been lifted, let's be honest about Princess&Frog: Outside of the gorgeous scenery, it didn't look like M&C's heart was in it.The setting, while new, had zero to do with the original ED Baker story that was pretty thin to begin with; the script had thrown out 90% of the book, and what was left looked...improvised. (Even defenders of the film cringed a little at the obligatory Looney-tribute cameo by Pa & Junyer Bear.)The post-Eisner attempt to convince us that Tiana WASN'T REALLY a princess, and wanted to work hard like a Positive Role Model, got in the way of her natural appeal and stripped her of her marketable personality (all she basically did was talk about her restaurant)...And while M&C usually excel at male protagonists, here "agendas" required that the prince be a less-than-sympathetically lazy bum, to go with the equally propagandic comedy relief to show little girls the Perils of Princess Worship.

In other words, P&tF just had TOO MANY danged other things on its mind than telling a story in its own environment...Which story focus was the appeal of the aforementioned Other Hit Fairytale from 18 years ago.That's not the reason Frog fell at the box office, of course (kill Alvin!), and yes, the rumor's a big fat busted crock--But as 12:57 points out, WDFA seems to be their own worst enemy in thinking they have to spin twice as hard to pretend to be what they're not. Imagine what kind of films they could make if they ever found out the audience liked them.

Okay, it's only my opinion but I'd like to see Don Hahn back at the helm. Dr. Ed and John have more than enough to do at Pixar. Don's got the smarts and the political savvy to take charge and launch another golden era.

Floyd Norman said... "Okay, it's only my opinion but I'd like to see Don Hahn back at the helm. Dr. Ed and John have more than enough to do at Pixar. Don's got the smarts and the political savvy to take charge and launch another golden era."

John has stretched himself too thin. His heart is in Pixar and while he has done great things at Disney improving the quality of their films. Without someone completely dedicated to the studio it will continue to leak money and have bomb after bomb. I have to say I was quite miffed when John took on Cars 2 as co-director. It just shows that he's willing to put his own projects in front of the ones he's getting paid by Disney to watch over. I'd like Don Hahn partnered with someone else to run Disney. It could do wonders.

Anonymous said... "Unless, of course, turns out it was never really a bell in the first place, and someone was just banging on a cracked pot."

The boy who cried wold is Hollywoods best manipulator. In other words it doesn't matter if any of it is true or not. At this point it's on everyones mind and has impacted the image of Disney Animation and Tangled, good or bad.

Tangled is now at 88% on RT with 51 reviews. I see a trend developing.

As good as it may be, I don't see it reaching the freshness ratings of TS3 (99% with 246 reviews) or Dragon (98% with 156 reviews). It's probably going to be closer to Princess and the Frog (84% with 155 reviews) or Bolt (89% with 175 reviews).

I wouldn't be surprised if the box office is also closer to PatF and Bolt. I don't see Tangled coming anywhere close to TS3 numbers, let alone Dragon. Given the cost of this film, that's going to really piss off Iger.

Maybe there's a grain of truth to the LA Times story, if Tangled doesn't pull off a box office miracle.

The thoughts and observations of the leaders of The Animation Guild (TAG), Local 839 IATSE. Jason MacLeod is the Business Representative, Laura Hohman is the President. Mike Sauer is Assistant to the Business Representative.

This weblog reflects their individual personal opinions and does not necessarily represent the official position of the Animation Guild.

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